As an environment-friendly vehicle in recent years, attention is focused on a vehicle that has a power storage device (for example, a secondary battery, capacitor or the like) mounted and that runs using the driving force generated from electric power stored in the power storage device. Such a vehicle includes, for example, an electric vehicle, a hybrid vehicle, a fuel cell vehicle, and the like.
In such a vehicle, the DC power from the power storage device is converted, generally using an inverter, into AC power for driving a rotating electric machine such as a motor generator. The vehicle is made to run using the driving force generated by the rotating electric machine, and the rotative force from a driving wheel, engine, or the like is converted into electric energy to charge the power storage device during regenerative braking.
When an error occurs in the inverter at such a vehicle, appropriate measures must be taken to prevent other devices from being affected.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 11-332002 (PTD 1) discloses a configuration in which an electric vehicle driving a motor by an inverter has inverter error detected based on whether the accumulated value of deviation Δld and Δlq between current command values ld* and lq* to the inverter and actual current values ld and lq exceeds a predetermined level, and when inverter error is detected, the inverter is shut down to stop the system.